Blog

While you want to foster employees who can carry out tasks by themselves and complete solo projects, collaborative teams and teamwork should always remain high on the priority list.

Great leaders understand that their success lies firmly in the success of those operating with them and individuals should also possess this same gauge to measure their personal success.

Benefits of Teamwork

To be clear, collaborative teamwork is when two or more people work on a project together. They share their thinking and ideas to come up different ways to achieve a common goal. The ideas are weighed up by each team member, and the best ideas are chosen, so the goal is reached. While many companies separate their workers so they essentially work on their own, a collaborative team environment will bring about a myriad of benefits. These benefits include:

• High degree of trust
• Creativity and greater learning potential
• Innovative ideas are brought forward
• Potential for more risk taking

Encouraging Teamwork

When the ideas are flowing through a positive collaborative effort, individuals can learn from each other. Interestingly, the more diverse the team, the greater the range of perspectives and ideas will come forward to benefit the company. In a team effort, everyone understands the need to work together, and there is no need to outperform one another to achieve corporate success.

Ways to Promote Collaborative Teams

So how can you promote a collaborative work environment? Here are three great ways to begin.

Provide Opportunities

The first thing you can do is to create an abundance of situations so your team members can learn to work together. By giving them a set of collective roles and responsibilities, you are presenting them with the tools needed to develop their collaborative experience. That can be a huge learning curve for many, particularly if your staff are used to working by themselves.

Know their Strengths

Common, achievable goals will see them working together and coming out the other end as successful. Focus on the strengths of individual team members so they can play to their talents and empower themselves and the group as a whole.

If you are uncertain where to begin, teaching your team about DISC profiles is a good start. You can also look at facilitating simple team-building activities and challenges to get the ball rolling. No one said that learning in the workplace needs to be dull or boring!

Maintain Communication

In any kind of team situation, communication plays an important role. Focus on ways that the teams can keep each other updated without the need to resort to time wasting meetings. Use apps such as Slack or other instant messaging software to keep everyone informed. When communication fails, it can have a direct impact on the cohesiveness of the group.

A collaborative team will ensure your team is heading in the right direction to achieve prosperity and success. It goes without saying that when someone feels heavily invested in something which is essentially larger than themselves, they are more likely to go above and beyond the call of duty to see it succeed.

For more ideas on how to improve the performance of your team, visit SR Group. It is their aim to create empowered and confident employees through effective and sustainable learning.